1. Quran is absolute and number One in our guidance to the truth.
Yes. This is correct. However, it’s impossible to understand the Koran without the hadith.
*2. The Sunnah, i.e. the practice of the holy prophet Muhammad is number two. We can say that as the Quran was revealed, the prophet practically followed it as if he translated the Quran for all of us by his personal example…
- The Hadith i.e. the verbal guidance or instructions from the prophet, whatever he said at different times was heard by a few persons …*
Planten, I might like to add that the
sunna and the verbal narrations passed down from Mohammed are both transmitted through the
hadith. Even major Muslim historians such as Al-Tabari, Ibn Ishaq, Waqidi, and Ibn Sa’d base their accounts about Mohammed all upon the Hadiths, and before each paragraph begins the full list of
hadith narrators is provided. I can see the distinction you’re making, but the sunna and Mohammed’s sayings are both found in the hadith together, many times side-by-side.
- So these narrations (Hadith) are also very useful for the Muslims. But they need to be used with care because many people introduced many false traditions / reports in those books of Hadith. There were false reporters. These collections of Hadith have been sorted out and examined and bad ones chucked out. But still some remain.*
What you have said is true. However, many times these “differences” are minor, such as the name of a place or a person. Rarely if ever (I cannot even think of an example right now) are Hadiths so different about the same issue that they cause such a conflict.
As you well know, scholars like Imam Bukhari, Imam Muslim, Imam Dawud, and Imam Tirmidhi, and many others spent years collecting and analysing hadiths, sorting out the good from the Bad. I believe it was Bukhari who spent 20 years sorting out his hadith collections, and in the end he chose less than 5% to use, yet his collection is the largest one. Hadiths, most notably Bukhari’s and Muslims, were classified as
sahih (صحيح) meaning “perfect, healthy, or whole,” describing the purity of the traditions and their narrators with regard to their validity and accuracy.
Additionally, Mohammed said the following:
لا تكذبو علي فانه من كذب علي فليلج النار
Don’t lie about me, for whoevr lies about me shall verily enter the fire (of hell)
-Bukhari, Volume 1, Book 3, Hadith 106 (see also 107 through 111); My translation, but for a parallel English-Arabic is the M.M. Khan translation by Darussalam Publishers (Riyadh, 1997).
If people who tell a lie against Mohammed or Allah, in Mohammed’s own words, go to hell, then why would a faithful Moslem intentionally forge hadith? If he did, he would become an infidel and go to hell when he died. The “false hadith” statement is a classic Islamic argument trying to discredit certain hadith, particularly those which show Mohammed in a negative or unsavory manner. I have no doubt there may have been some forged hadith, but most Moslems, and especially those who compiled these collections, were good, honest, faithful Moslems who wanted to serve Allah and Mohammed and for this reason they spent much time gather these hadith together, sorting them out, writing them down, and teaching them. They had no interest in teaching lies, or what they though were lies. They wanted to teach their followers truth, and for that reason they wrote down what they knew was truth, whether it presents a favorable or negative image of Islam.
As a response, can you name a “false hadith” and explain why it’s a false hadith, giving not only proof but also proper logical reasoning?
- a. Any Hadith should not go against the clear teaching of Quran. It should not be against any verse of Quran. Otherwise we have to reject the Hadith or the verse of the Quran.*
This is part of the problem. The Koran is explained by the Hadith. As I’m sure you are well aware, the Koran is inseparable from Mohammed’s life- each verse or bloc of verses is connected to a particular event that happened, and after that event happened Mohammed spoke a part of the Koran. The hadiths are the only means we have to explain the circumstances surrounding each passage of the Koran.
An excellent study about this was done by Theodor Noeldeke, in his Geschichte des Qorans. Another likewise study was conducted by the Shia Imam Abdullah Zanjanji in his (I believe the title is) Tafhim-i-Quran. Both of these studies are in their native German and Persian still, but both reach the same conclusions about the ordering of the verses, and for the same reasons- because through the Hadith narratives, we can easily reconstruct Islamic history.
b. Similarly, any Hadith should not be against any other well known authentic hadith. Other wise we have to reject a good Hadith or we have to doubt the false one.
True again. However, often times the differences are very small.
*…Another golden rule is that a Hadith cannot take charge of the Quran. The Hadith is to serve the Quran and Sunnah, not to overtake them in any way. We use the Hadith to undertand the Quran. But if any Hadith cannot be made to agree with the Quran even after much effort, then that Hadith has to be rejected. *
This was already responded to- the Hadith doesn’t run the Koran- the Hadith
explains the Koran. Without the hadith, it’s impossible to have a complete understanding of the Koranic text because, regardless of if you believe in Islam or not, the Koran was written during a particular time in history, and there were circumstances that took place at the time when Mohammed spoke a particular verse. You cannot know the circumstances because the Koran doesn’t give them- it only gives what Mohammed (if you’re a Moslem, Allah), said. You need to use the hadith to ascertain the circumstances in order to have a full understanding of the meaning.
